


once upon a time

by curiositykilled



Series: a small clock seen faintly [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bedtime Stories, Gen, Kid Natasha, Memory Alteration, Protective Bucky Barnes, Red Room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 06:04:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3346265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiositykilled/pseuds/curiositykilled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I know I said there'd be Becca&Peggy, so I'm really sorry about that. I've actually had chunks of a majorly Becca&Peggy piece on Drive since I wrote 'counterweight,' but it just keeps not being the piece that needs uploaded at the moment. Plus, Baby Natasha/Winter Soldier feels are basically my ultimate kryptonite, so it's kinda' tough to not want to write them over figuring out early SHIELD</p>
<p>AN 2/17/15: Changed Nat's nickname for Bucky to Vanya thanks to <a href="http://wintergaydar.tumblr.com/post/71487710917/hello-class-today-i-would-like-to-tell-you-why">meta</a></p></blockquote>





	once upon a time

           She comes in with flame-red hair and pale, wide eyes, and it thinks, _I know her._ The thought’s gone as soon as it forms, but there’s something in the little girl’s eyes that makes it wonder if perhaps that itching at the back of its neck isn’t its alone.

           They give it more freedom now, let it stay out for months. There are no clocks or calendars here, so it tracks the time by her progress and his entropy. The asset lasts two weeks before its coding starts failing, and ‘it’ becomes 'he' in an exorable crawl to consciousness. Bugs crawl out of his programming in the form of spectres, nightmares, and placeless names: a skinny man, lip split and eye black; _protect her_ , an order more fierce than any handler's ever  given.

            “Vanya?” she whispers one night, tucked against his chest.

           She chose the name, picked it when he had none to give her. Though he prefers it to ‘the asset,’ it doesn’t quite feel like his. He’s out of practice of having a name.

            “Tell me a story?” she asks.

           He thinks for a few, silent moments. They’re leaving for Syria in the morning, and his thoughts have been with the coming mission more than anything else. It’s hard to sift through all the data stored in his mind when his programming is so corrupted. He’s long overdue for a wipe, and he vacillates between burning with remembered pain and aching for the clarity they grant.

            “Once upon a time,” he starts before pausing to swallow.

           His throat clicks, dry with disuse. He speaks now, to direct the girls he’s training, and even, occasionally, to converse with her, but his voice feels strange and raw against the back of his throat.

            “Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived beside a great, dark forest. The forest was full of terrible things: ghosts and ghouls and goblins. But the worst of all of them was the Wolf.”

           The words come more easily now, in threes and sixes rather than one or none at a time. She sighs, a soft puff of air against his neck, and his arms shift to pull her closer. It's muscle memory: the weight of another child, gesture of another life.

            “One day, the little girl was playing by the woods and got lost,” he continues. “She looked everywhere but couldn’t find a path. Then, suddenly, the Wolf appeared.

           ‘How dare you trespass in my woods,’ it growled. ‘You must pay a tax to walk here.’ The little girl had nothing to give except the cloak her mother had made her and the knife her father had given her, but she was brave and clever.

           ‘I have nothing to give you,’ she said, ‘except a kiss.’ The Wolf grumbled and growled, but finally, he decided he’d accept the kiss as payment. As he leaned towards her, though, the little girl pulled out her knife and stabbed him straight through the heart.”

           She’s asleep, he knows: her breathing’s slowed to that easy, in-in-in, _out_ pattern of the unconscious. He swallows and loosens his left hand from where it’s torn through the thin blanket beneath them.

           “She went home with red hands,” he finishes, “and the people were terrified. But the wolves in the woods never bothered them again.”

           He settles in then, back to the wall and eyes on the door. In the morning, the handlers come get them and they leave. She lures the mark away from the crowd easy as you please, wide innocent face lending itself to the man’s demise. She’s quick, but not quick enough - the man has his hand up her soft white dress before the operatives are even past the stairwell. On a rooftop across the park, the asset’s finger twitches once, and the man goes down in a quick spurt of blood.

           He’s dragged off the roof though he doesn’t resist. He sees her only in passing, eyes narrowed in confusion as they track his forced march away. Then they’re back at the base, and he’s pressed into the chair and the white white white burns him away.

           The handlers bring in a girl, hair bright as fire, and say she is their best, that it is to train her to be better. They watch it instead of her, hands twitching towards holstered guns, eyes flitting towards and away from it in rapid succession. It doesn’t go easy on her, works her as hard as it works the other girls, and then, as she progresses, harder. She’s quick and brilliant, and it thinks of rubies, flames, of a story it once heard of a little girl and a dark wood and a wolf. It thinks, as she chokes another girl with brutal efficiency, that maybe it’s not the wolf they should fear but the girl who came back from the woods with her hands dripping red.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I know I said there'd be Becca&Peggy, so I'm really sorry about that. I've actually had chunks of a majorly Becca&Peggy piece on Drive since I wrote 'counterweight,' but it just keeps not being the piece that needs uploaded at the moment. Plus, Baby Natasha/Winter Soldier feels are basically my ultimate kryptonite, so it's kinda' tough to not want to write them over figuring out early SHIELD
> 
> AN 2/17/15: Changed Nat's nickname for Bucky to Vanya thanks to [meta](http://wintergaydar.tumblr.com/post/71487710917/hello-class-today-i-would-like-to-tell-you-why)


End file.
